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Political education within '72 election

As U.S. Sen. John Kerry submitted his resignation Friday, I couldn't help but recall how he started in politics 41 years ago here in Lowell.

He burst on the scene to run for the congressional seat being vacated by Lowell Congressman F. Bradford Morse, a Republican who was leaving to take on a major role at the United Nations.

It was the wildest congressional election most of us ever experienced, an election that clearly was impacted by The Sun and an election that was watched closely by the White House. It even became a part of the Watergate scandal as it was later learned that people from the infamous Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) were in the area monitoring the Kerry campaign.

It was also an election that set the stage for Paul Tsongas going to Washington as a congressman and later as a senator.

Kerry, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, was fresh off getting national attention for his dramatic speech before a congressional committee, where he set the early tone to end the war.

He was a darling of the liberals and the anti-war movement.

He was looking for a place to run, reportedly was close to running in Worcester, when Morse announced he wasn't going to run for re-election.

Kerry immediately switched plans, came to Lowell and announced he was running for the 5th District seat.

This was a seat Lowell Democrats had been eyeing for years.

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The Republicans had held the seat for more than 70 years from John Jacob Rogers to Edith Nourse Rogers to Morse.

But too many Lowell candidates split the field and Kerry was able to win the primary. The general-election campaign, however, proved very different as Kerry had to take on Andover Republican Paul Cronin and a brutal assault from The Sun.

Even at that, very few thought Kerry could lose.

But The Sun was relentless in its blistering editorials attacking Kerry for his anti-war stance while American boys were still fighting for their country, painting him as a carpetbagger who didn't care where he ran as long as he though he could win.

On the morning of the primary, Lowell had its own Watergate break-in when two of Kerry's campaign aides were arrested in the basement of the campaign headquarters of another candidate in downtown Lowell. They claimed they were there because they feared someone would sabotage their phone system, which was critical to getting their vote out.

I was city editor at the time and Frank Phillips (now of the Boston Globe) was our political reporter. We made a great team in covering the election, one of the most interesting congressional races going on in the country at the time.

We walked a tightrope trying to cover the campaign fairly when then-Editor Clement C. Costello was directing the toughest editorial and cartoon messages in the history of the newspaper.

Few people gave Cronin a chance when the campaign started, but the young Kerry folks underestimated the strength of The Sun and the fact the 5th District was a very patriotic district and loyal to President Richard Nixon.

On Election Day, everyone was stunned -- Kerry lost and Nixon won in a landslide, with the president carrying every state but Massachusetts. The exposure of Watergate, months later, changed everything.

I was surprised, after his defeat, that Kerry called me and invited Phillips and I to have lunch with him in the house he had bought in the Belvidere section of the city.

After the bitter campaign I wasn't sure I wanted to eat at the Kerry table, but Phillips and I decided to go. After a lot of small talk, Kerry opened a can of Franco-American spaghetti, which we all shared.

If Kerry had won that election, it's very unlikely Paul Tsongas would have run for the seat two years later. Tsongas ended up defeating Cronin and eventually going on to win a U.S. Senate seat. Fate and timing plays a big role in politics.

Kerry, to his credit, licked his wounds, went to law school, worked in the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, eventually became lieutenant governor then won the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sen. Paul Tsongas and now holds one of the most powerful positions in the world.

Phillips often tells people everything he knows about politics, he learned in Lowell. The 1972 congressional race was a huge part of his education.

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Our condolences to the Paul and Molly Sheehy family whose son, Edward "Ned" Sheehy, died this week.

Paul was a big part of the 1972 congressional campaign and probably would have been the Democratic nominee except so many Lowell candidates jumped into the race and split the local vote. The death of Ned Sheehy and the recent deaths of Mary Maloney and Josephine Krasnecki remind me of what a caring community we are. I saw in all three of these deaths a tremendous response from friends and neighbors to these families. It reminds me how lucky we are to live here, where roots, family and neighborhood are important. Ned Sheehy was a very popular young man whose presence could light up a room. Maloney and Krasnecki were strong women who were part of the Greatest Generation and remained active and involved into their 90s.

Our condolences also to The Sun's Chris Scott, whose dad, Donald Frederick Scott, died this week.

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